this post was inspired by the vibes of ‘something very bad is going to happen’ and, in particular, the scenes below that resonated heavily with fumi during 2021-2024. it ended up taking on a life of its own until it became the length it did, so... 👻 reader, beware, you’re in for a rambling scare.
the elephant in the room of fumi’s characterization that i feel like can be discussed and touched on in length beyond crumbs in narration, and by branching off from the vibes in the show, is fumi’s love life and how the elephant is an elephant.
the elephant is notable because... fumi’s love life wasn’t built upon the typical creation of the ‘ex-’ npc (singular or plural), but rather characters / muses created by ex-writing partners that were later treated as npcs upon the ‘ex-’ in the partnership. but i feel that to explain why it’s a big deal that fumi is where she is now in life and how greatly it differs from the tropes of ‘the carefree nomad’ and of ‘the bitter single’, we’d have to go back to twenty twenty-one.
even back then, there has always been a disconnect to the allonormativity and amatonormativity that’s prevalent in the community no matter the year, but the major difference in that disconnect is in the present day, where fumi and i have accepted having interests that do not align with others, versus back in the day feeling as if there was something fundamentally wrong for those interests not aligning, rather than it simply being a case of being wrong for each other. to put it as a metaphor: people who only want to go somewhere for cocktail hour won’t be interested in touching the food of a five-course meal. neither the cocktail enthusiasts nor the foodies are wrong in their preferences, just wrong for each other, and would be better suited to engaging with other foodies and other cocktail enthusiasts.
but it’s easier to say that in hindsight, since the reality is that it took the full span of '21-'24 to really come to terms with how fundamentally unaligned my interests were not only from my ship partners but, even more glaringly, from the people (and characters) that were very into the male characters fumi was shipped with during those years. and with hindsight, it’s easier to see how stagnant her characterization and character development were becoming in favor of all the stress constantly flooding in during that time, either in character or out of character (with one prime example being the time a mun made a burner blog and then more burner blogs to get past anon being off, and i went to the er from that stress). but when you’re in the thick of something... it’s easy to think you just need to “tough it out”.
the breaking point that significantly altered the mindset that fumi and i both had, was realizing that there was and is no strength in “toughing it out”. there was no strength in enduring the comments or passive aggression towards the constant implication of fumi being boring, the jealousy from outsiders of her relationship with male characters, her not being this or that in the way someone else’s adventurous muse was this or that, and the way she couldn’t just exist in her ships because of interest in the other party that made her question herself more than question them. all of that effort to be more this or that and less herself fell away when she realized how easily she, her relationship, and the marriage she had, could be replaced within forty-eight hours of doors being left open for the future, in-character and out-of-character alike. significantly altering her mindset towards soulmates, being married, and normalized things such as committed relationships, all with one fell swoop of it being explained that the ex-spouse was healing and moving on. hearing this explanation started building the bridge into who and how fumi is today.
the bridge between then and now was much longer than the actual span of time, thanks to the grief and coming to terms with the situation and picking herself up to properly live life (rather than going about each day grieving). from adjusting to the rug being pulled out from under the social circle she had built during her time with that ex, to leaving behind the things and the home they built together, changing her married surname back to her birth surname, and rebuilding her life after her identity had been a branch off of past ships for the past few years, fumi had to go through an entire journey that in present day can be watered right down to ‘being happily single’. when the reality is a longer and more somber story, as she was someone who would have endlessly endured being seen as a ‘stepmother,’ ‘mom,’ ‘wife,’ or spouse, much more than being seen as ‘just fumi,’ and she would have endured the negative connotations in terms such as “the nagging wife”, amongst other things.
thankfully, and with many thanks to that ex-mutual and their male muse, fumi has been far for the better in many, many ways thanks to those actions that firmly closed the door on her waiting around—‘right where you left me’-esque—for the future.
fumi has grown in a way that could be a tie between coming to terms with those events / her life over those years in ships, and now being in her early thirties, the age at which she had resigned to the idea that she would be nothing more than a blouse-and-skirt-wearing mother and/or wife. compared to her time being single before then, being single this time around is a very different experience. she no longer desperately tries to have someone over or goes over to someone else’s place out of the discomfort of being alone; she no longer entertains someone doing the bare minimum of advances, and most notably, she now travels outside of work by herself more.
fumi has become more comfortable traveling for pleasure, even dining by herself on ‘solo dates’ in the same way she was (and is) comfortable with going to bookstores alone. her mindset towards it being ‘sad’ if she should do such things, and then it being ‘bad’ to do such things when she should be going somewhere and doing such with a romantic partner/companion, has been entirely swapped out for... just doing it because she wants to. and not caring what others might think or say on the matter. this mindset has also extended to the way she styles herself and dresses how she wants, rather than calculating in outside factors all the time.
all in all, truly becoming ‘just fumi’ in many, many ways. ways that have been hard to articulate by simply saying that she is happily single. which she is, but not in the stereotypical way of being bitter towards those that aren’t single and do engage with sex, romance, marriage, or the soulmate ideology. her happiness in singlehood comes with the realization of how much autonomy she has now, compared to her ‘old life,’ and how unwilling she is to bend anymore on her space, her body, and her life.
